The technology that wants to improve our experience in bed to sleep better

This year there have been some rather peculiar characters at CES Las Vegas. We are not talking about Alexa, which to be virtual has had enough presence in the fair, but to the most peculiar devices among which we found “smart” beds and pillows. Is there also a fad in technology for sleep enhancement?

With the rise of mobile devices, the technology had been pointed rather guilty as to take away the dream, although in the end what is decisive is the use that is made in each case. But beyond the typical apps or wearables that monitor sleep in recent months we have seen how technology has been getting more into our bed (to rest).

What we see here is that we continue to use the adjective smart when talking about a connected object and that in the last proposal has been wanted to go beyond bracelets or quantifying tapes. The problem is that sometimes monitoring is not enough to solve a problem and that for newer products (and assets beyond counting) there is still nothing that proves its effectiveness (they have not been on the market for the most part).

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May the bed warm your feet and the pillow you sing a nana

What we saw in Las Vegas we commented here listing the most striking of the show and more specifically, Home talking Sleep Number 360 the smart bed. A bed that connects to accessories and smartphones designed to adapt to our posture, put alarms or even end snoring helping us to change position.

In addition to that, it also has a function to warm our feet, since in some cases the fact that this part does not warm up prevents sleep or comfort. Of course, the “smart” has its impact on the price and this will go from 800 and 7,100 dollars (depending on the size).

Something more affordable is Zeeq, which we also saw next to the most striking CES’17. An “intelligent” pillow when connected to the smartphone and integrates speakers, being able to reproduce sound to help us sleep. We saw it in a video of CNet and also its price, 249 dollars.

I could not miss the smart mask

Do you wear one of those masks to help you sleep? That is already the past, at least for the creators of Neuroon, the “smart” mask that, of course, integrates sensors and connects to our smartphone (iOS and Android). It transfers the biometric information it records (electroencephalogram, pulse oximetry, temperature, pulse, oxygen saturation, and sleep movements and phases). All under a hypoallergenic material and for $299.

Neither could Xiaomi miss

Xiaomi was not going to be less and also has its proposal in this field. We saw it in Android last December with Lunar Smart Sleep Sensor, a device with a bar of soap to analyze the quality of sleep in a way similar to the intelligent bracelets.

It synchronizes to the smartphones through wifi to show with the app the dream patterns with the objective to improve them, in addition to incorporate the technology Triple Sound, that is to say, that Lunar gives advice to him to sleep (in Chinese). Yes, at the moment is in its micromanagement platform and we do not know if it will leave China and what would be its low cost (about 9 dollars).

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A barrier between measuring and solving

Among all this can be broadly differentiated two types of devices: quantifiers and those that propose a more direct action. For many it is too early to determine whether they really do help or have an effect, but especially the former (which have been in the market for a long time) have no clear evidence that a solution is per (and not Just a source of information).

That is, we can get percentages or times of our “deep sleep” (REM phase) or “light sleep” but this is not in itself an aid. And in this respect the psychologist Michael Breus clarifies in StatNews that there is a lack of clinical support for a remedy to sleep problems.

There is an inherent problem [in sleep technology] because consumers have all these ways of monitoring the body, but clinicians do not find a way to answer all the questions that this entails.

Something similar to what Dr. Gholam Motamedi, a neurologist at MedStar University Hospital in Georgetown, said, referring to this possible barrier.

These devices may give us an idea of how we sleep, but I’m not sure users can directly interpret the results.

Some proposals try to differentiate in this sense, like Beddit, a sensor that in addition to the habitual registries can detect signs of apnea, so that advises the visit to a specialist. In fact, digitizing sleep data could be helpful in the future (a kind of global database), being able to establish relationships between sleep patterns and age or other characteristics, as also commented Breu.